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The world's richest man is now Elon Musk, not Jeff Bezos

'How strange...well, back to work,' tweets Musk in response

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Tesla continues its meteoric rise, taking with it its CEO, Elon Musk. With Thursday market movements, Elon Musk has surpassed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to become the richest man in the world, Bloomberg reported, with a net worth of over $188.5 billion—1.5$ billion more than Bezos.

Musk, 49, made the mark after on Thursday as Tesla shares surged by 4.8 per cent—continuing its 2020 trajectory, a year in which is went up by over 700 per cent even amid the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic. Over the past year , Musk’s net worth soared by more than $150 billion in possibly the fastest bout of wealth creation in history.

It’s worth noting, however, that since most of Musk’s worth is tied to his ownership of 20.7 per cent of Tesla stock, he is relatively “cash-poor”—a term Musk himself has used to describe himself in court in 2019. In fact, in 2019, he claimed that he would sell almost all of his physical possessions. His reaction to taking the title of the world’s richest man?

“How strange...well, back to work,” he tweeted in response to a Twitter account stating the news.

Musk has since pinned a 2018 tweet of his where he said he wished half his money to help problems on earth. “About half my money is intended to help problems on Earth & half to help establish a self-sustaining city on Mars to ensure continuation of life (of all species) in case Earth gets hit by a meteor like the dinosaurs or WW3 happens & we destroy ourselves,” read the tweet.

As chief executive officer of SpaceX, Musk is also a rival to Bezos, owner of Blue Origin LLC, in the private space race.

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